Daily Dialogue — May 25, 2013
Lyle: [Taunting the mainly-black railworkers] When you was slaves, you sang like birds. Come on! Let’s hear a good, old nigger work song!
Enraged, the workers move to attack him, but are stopped by Bart. He promptly proceeds to sing.
Bart: [Crooning, Sammy Davis, Jr.-style, with fellow railworkers providing backing vocals] I get no kick from champagne… Mere alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all…[the bullying supervisors look immensely insulted] so why then should it be true?… that I get a belt — outta you… Some get a kick from coca-yeai-yeaiiiinnnneee…
Lyle: Hold it! Hold it! What the hell is that shit?! I meant a song! A real song! Something like [singing] “Swing low, sweet chariot”…
The railworkers mumble to each other in mock confusion.
Lyle: Don’t know that one, huh. Well how about “De Camptown Ladies”?
Bart: De Camptown Ladies?
Railworkers: De Camptown Ladies?
Lyle: Oh, you know! “De Camptown ladies sing this song, doo-dah, doo-dah! Camptown Race Track five miles long, oh-de-do-da-dahy!”
The white supervisors begin joining in, complete with ludicrous dancing actions, much to the amusement of the railworkers. Suddenly, Taggart rides in aboard a galloping horse, shooting wildly into the air, interrupting the song, and scattering the white supervisors aside.
Taggart: What in the Wide World of Sports is a-goin’ on here? I hired you people to get some track laid, not to jump around like a bunch of Kansas City faggots!
— Blazing Saddles (1974), screenplay by Mel Brooks & Norman Steinberg & Andrew Bergman & Richard Pryor & Alan Uger, story by Andrew Bergman
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is original composition [song/poem], sugggested by churnage. Today’s suggestion by plinytheelder_t.
Trivia: After writing his first two feature films on his own, Mel Brooks was nostalgic for the collaborative group writing style of his days on Your Show of Shows, so he employed 4 other writers to work with. According to co-writer Andrew Bergman, who wrote the treatment on which the film is based, almost all of the scenes include some contribution from the 5 writers.
Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary from pliny: “Now this script would never get past the development execs at any major studio, with what is now its completely inappropriate language. But for all that, this movie is still one of the funniest movies ever made (Richard Pryor co-wrote the script. Guess which parts.) and a bitingly sharp social commentary on race. Mel Brooks does to racists here what he did to Nazis in The Producers.”